Dr. William Varner, a professor at the Master’s College, has written a response to John Piper’s recent comments that Christianity has a “masculine feel.” Varner is a self-professed complimentarian and believes that the role of elder is reserved for men and that men are to exercise leadership in the home. However, Varner fears Piper’s comments could serve to further disinfranchise and devalue a segment of the church that has, throughout the history of the church, been de-humanized:
His claim is flawed in its assumption that masculinity is, somehow, an extra-cultural reality. There may be an over-abundance of male activity in church history and Christian missions simply because women were told that they were not as as fully human as the men next to them. His statement that “The Son of God came into the world to be a man” sounds close to the idea that it was maleness which God redeemed, not humanity.
Piper is buying into a long-standing tendency in church history where women are intentionally excised from the biblical narrative. . . . When masculinity becomes the virtue par excellence, the value of what it means to be a woman or “feminine” is mortally undercut. What the church desperately needs is to value both men and women as equally and wholly made in the imago dei, while recognizing some important differing roles for each. This cannot happen when the biblical text is intentionally re-written to exclude women. Christianity ought to have a cruciform feel, not a masculine one.
Varner goes on to explain that Christianity does not need a “masculine feel” so much as a “servant feel”:
Nowhere are believers called to be “masculine.” The challenge for Christian males is to discover how we can be Christian men who are like the One who is “among you as one who serves,” and who called us, not to seek recognition as leaders, but to serve others (Matt 23:1-12; please read this). In other words, we are to be loving leaders who are servant leaders! These are oxymoronic expressions that can only be understood as part of the Gospel Paradox. Another place to re-start our education is to study afresh the roles of such women as Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, the “Woman of Valor,” Anna, Mary Magdalene, Euodias, Syntyche, Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia, among others! And don’t study them so we can explain away these women, but to somehow work their ministries into our convictions of male-eldership.
I saw my gifted daughter squelched into accepting a very limited role despite her considerable abilities. She had no desire to be a pastor, but she just wanted to serve the Lord with her gifts. She was told to find a seminary student and marry him. That is not a life to be despised, but was it the advice she needed at the time?
I know that I will be criticized because this is not the party line which Piper represents. Men, I am just asking us to obey Jesus’ teaching, which is NOT “be masculine,” but “serve.”
As the father of a daughter, I cringe at the idea of someone telling her to “find a seminary student and marry him” due to possessing certain spiritual gifts. Perhaps this indicates that many of our churches have spent so much time speaking to men and defending “Biblical” manhood against its various critics that we’ve neglect to properly encourage and empower women to serve in the church. I am not going to say whether Piper has neglected this task but I just want to simply ask, what if we gave less credence to the idea that Christianity has a “masculine feel” and sought more diligently to promote a form of Christianity with a more distinctly self-sacrificial feel?
My wife growing up was told she was groomed to be a pastor’s wife. And we see how well that worked out.